


We Must Unlearn the Constellations to See The Stars

by gyzym



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-26
Updated: 2010-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-13 09:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyzym/pseuds/gyzym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in your dreams you never quite try hard enough. Even in your dreams you never get it exactly right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Must Unlearn the Constellations to See The Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Despite the stated pairings, this is mooooostly Robert genfic, but only mostly. Title is from a fantastic Jack Gilbert poem called Tear it Down, and angelgazing totally found it for me.

You are four years old, and your father is teaching you how to shake hands.

"Grip firmly," he says, "but don't squeeze. A man with a limp handshake has no gumption; a man who chokes you at the wrist is trying too hard. This may be the most important thing I ever teach you, son, so pay attention."

You want to tell him you _are_ paying attention, want to tell him that you always do, but you are four years old and you don't how. You take his hand instead, your smaller fingers peeking out over the edge of his palm, and grip as firmly as you know how.

"Like this?" you ask.

"Almost," your father says, nearly smiling as he pumps your hand up and down. "A little looser next time."

Later, there are guests for dinner, and you greet them politely in your loafers and your clip-on tie. When one of them offers you his hand you shake it, not too firm, not too loose, like your father taught you.

"You are Maurice's little man, aren't you?" the guest asks, and you smile.

\--

You are eight years old, and there are strangers in your mother's bedroom.

Your nanny has been wringing her hands all morning, looking from you to the dark hallway where you can hear the sound of sobs, and it is Saturday. Saturday is your day with your father, when he can spare the time--Saturday is the day you go into the city or up to his office, the day he lets you hold his hand instead of shake it.

But today is not your day, and you know this, you can tell. You do not complain, because even if you are too young to understand, you are old enough to know that something is wrong. Your nanny gives you a sheet of paper and lets you scrawl across it, and then she shows you how to turn it into a pinwheel, with a bright brass brad holding it together in the center.

Your father comes out of the bedroom at noon, with wild hair and wilder eyes, and barks, "Get him out of here."

She takes you to the park.

"What's wrong?" you ask her, and someday, someday, you will be older and taller and smarter, like your father, and your voice won't sound so little.

"Your mother is sick," she says, looking uncomfortable. "You little sister--"

"In her tummy?"

"Yes," your nanny says, gently, quietly. "She's sick also. The doctors are trying to save her."

"Oh," you say. You think that you should probably say something else, but you have never met your little sister and you are eight years old and you are at the playground, now. You let go of her hand and run, the pinwheel whipping in the wind against your fingers, and don't think of anything at all.

That night your father is sitting in his study with his head in his hands and a glass sitting on his desk. It is filled with that stuff that looks like apple juice but is never, ever apple juice, and you are terrified. You want to make him feel better because he is not your father like this, he is someone else, someone small and scared and weak like you, and you are still young enough to believe he could slay dragons if he wanted.

"Daddy," you say, and you hold out the pinwheel, but when he turns to look at you his eyes are hard.

"Damn it, Robert," he sighs, like he's tired of talking and tired of thinking and tired of _you_ , "now is not the time."

\--

You are eleven and your mother is dead and your mother is dead and your mother is dead, and it's Uncle Peter's hand on your shoulder even though you know it should be your father's.

\--

You are seventeen and you are in Europe and you are drinking wine.

Your father hadn't wanted to bring you on this trip, but he'd wanted to leave you home alone even less. You have tried to tell him that you wouldn't throw a party, that you wouldn't burn the house down, but he doesn't trust you and you can't make him trust you, so you've stopped bothering. You know he prefers the winter months, when you are at boarding school and he doesn't have to think about you, but it's blazing hot and mid-July and so you've been dragged along to Bologna.

You are still too young to know much about good wine, but you are old enough to know that this is it. You're old enough to know that you need to slow down, that the fuzzy edges of your vision will not clear up, that you could embarrass your father and yourself. You take a small sip anyway and one of the guests leans over, smiles at you.

"So," she says (and it's obviously, obviously pity for the ill-proportioned long-armed man-boy you just can't help but be), "Robert, is it?"

"Yes," you say.

"Tell me, what do you want to do with your life?"

It's blunt and it's open and it's almost rude, and she asks like she doesn't know the answer, like you've ever, ever had a choice. And there are so many things you want to say that you're choking on them--politics or astrophysics, bartending or neurosurgery, anything, _anything_. But your father's eyes are on you, cool and considering, waiting on your answer because he's never trusted you at all, and it's not like it's the first time you've wanted to throw yourself against the glass walls of this house he's built for you and howl.

"The family business, of course," you demur, and the woman smiles like you've passed a test, and your father nods and looks away.

\--

You dream.

You dream of climbing mountains and fighting tigers and having coffee with your mother, of standing ovations and crisp autumn days and rainstorms you try to outrun. You dream, and in your dreams you are better than you are in reality--in your dreams you are stronger and smarter, more of a person than you can ever manage to be in your life. In your dreams you are the valedictorian instead of the salutatorian and the satisfaction in your father's eyes is less rote, less for show, and he takes you to dinner and smiles at you over the second course and tells you he's proud.

But even in your dreams you drop your fork when he says it, and his eyes go hard and cold. Even in your dreams he growls "Damn it, Robert," and turns away, and even in your dreams you can't summit the mountain and the tiger beats you every time. Even in your dreams your mother drops dead over her second cup and the rain catches up to you in the end, and the standing ovation is over too soon, and you are second best no matter what title they grant you.

Even in your dreams you never quite try hard enough. Even in your dreams you never get it exactly right.

\--

You are twenty two and you are in Barcelona and you are in love.

His name is Adán and he an art student and you notice his hands first, illustrating a point to someone else in the crowded bar your friends have dragged you to. They are broad hands, covered in painter's callouses and always spattered with pigment, and they bring you to raptures in his too-soft bed for days and weeks and months, learning the lines of your body. His hair is dark and cropped close and you run your fingers through it while he sings your praises in several tongues, and when he gasps "Robert, Robert, te amo," you murmur "Mi corazón" into his thigh and thank every higher power you can think of for learning this beautiful fucking language.

You are not supposed to be in Barcelona and you are not supposed to want men and you are not supposed to be offering your _corazón_ to anyone, but you had asked for this one thing for graduation and your father had let you have it. It's six months, six months to travel Europe with your friends, and your father thinks you have moved on to Prague and Florence and Brussels by now. He doesn't know about the apartment tucked in a corner of the Barri Gòtic, doesn't know about the way Adán runs charcoal across your hipbone in the early morning light and teaches you about Botero and Vermeer, doesn't know about how he feathers kisses against your skin, warm and sweet and open.

You have never felt like this, like someone wants you for yourself, and you are addicted. You know you are living on borrowed time but you try not to think of it--you let yourself imagine being the kind of person who could run into this, who could turn off your phone and stop trying. Who could let love carry you through. But you know your father would find you, and you know how he would look at you when he did, and it keeps you awake when you should be curled sated in the blankets, blind to the coming sunrise.

Adán is furious when you tell him you're leaving, and you fight viciously. His Spanish is a lot better than yours and your English is a little better than his and you manage to hurt each other brutally despite this, violent and wounded and raw. He still shares your taxi to the airport, still trails two fingers down your cheek and looks at you like you're breaking his heart, and you kiss him as fiercely as you know how and wish you were someone, anyone else.

\--

You are twenty nine and your father is dead and you are a disappointment, and you are a disappointment, and you are a disappointment.

You board the flight to Los Angeles with your jaw set, because you know it is wrong to be angry but you cannot help it. Because you had given up on living your own life long before you'd been old enough to have one, and it wasn't enough, it was never enough, and you've been waiting for the day when it would be. You've been waiting for your father to finally, finally thank you, to tell you you've done well, to do _anything_ , and now he is dead and you've got no choice but to carry on being this person and you're never going to find that validation, you're never going to be that whole.

You fall asleep early on in the flight and you dream strangely; of torture and kidnap, of ice worlds and hand grenades, of Uncle Peter selling you out. You dream of a man named Mr. Charles and water tilting in its glass and a pinwheel you've never been able to forget, and your father, and your father, and your father. You dream of safe codes and hotel rooms and your stupidly expensive wallet, and when you jolt awake you feel like you've been punched in the chest.

You think: _My father wanted me to be my own man_.

And you know, you know, you _know_ that isn't true. The only man your father ever wanted you to be was _him_ , and you never quite measured up, you never did it right. But it occurs to you, filling out your immigration form, that your father is dead.

 _Your father is dead_.

The kind of man he wanted you to be might be immaterial.

\--

You are thirty seven and you are up for re-election and you are a man of the people.

Politics had been a hobby at first, something to do with the small fortune you'd made selling off your father's empire piece by tainted piece. You are good at shaking hands and eager to please, and you know more about alternative energy than you ever did about running a company. Your constituents love you and your connections are myriad and far reaching, and you think that if you win this second term you might just run for Senate one day.

You are at a fundraiser, singing for your supper, when you run into Mr. Saito. You'd met him once, in a meeting with your father, back before his illness had gotten the better of him--he is as commanding as you remember but less imposing too, a lingering air of sadness that hadn't been there before following him like a cloud. Something stirs within you at the sight of him, some dormant feeling you don't know how to name, and you stare because you can't help staring.

He takes a bite of the crostini he's just been handed and a small spot of olive tapenade catches at the corner of his mouth. For a split second, for all it is irrational, you think it looks like blood.

"Congressman," he says, "if I were a citizen in this country, I would quite like to make a donation to your campaign."

"Why?" you ask, because you feel a little wrong-footed, suddenly, because you cannot contain yourself.

He smiles, and it's not quite right--a little guilty and maybe a little proud, although you can't be sure about that. You know that despite your best efforts your father haunts you, that you look for pride in all the wrong places to make up for him.

"I have always believed in the power of the people," Mr. Saito says, "and that of the men who lead them."

You shake his hand, and it's cool and dry under your palm. His grip is exactly right, not too firm and not too loose, and when you meet his eyes he is looking back at you, like he is seeking a variety of absolution you don't know how to offer.

\--

You are forty five and you are a senator and you are in love.

Saito looks at you like you're made of glass sometimes, when you can spare the time out of the paparazzi's watchful eye to see him. He looks at you like you are something precious and all too easily destroyed, and his words are wound rich with the flavor of things unsaid, and some days you feel like you are grasping at straws. But other days he is funny and warm, and other days he is commanding and vital, and he is proud of you. You've long since passed the point in your life where you knew how to love recklessly, but you are no less in love for this, and no less well-pleased with your lot.

You are never as sure of yourself, of your place in the world, as your father had been. You hold attention but don't demand it; you are firm but never insistent. You do not scream your points as your father had screamed them, and you don't walk like your father walked--like the seas would part for him, like he owned the room.

You think that this is probably alright.

There are mornings where you catch your reflection in the mirror and are surprised. Your hair is starting to go silver at your temples and you need reading glasses, and, in the right light, you look a bit like him. There are evenings where you sit in your study with a glass of scotch and doubt your decisions, but they are few and far between these days. In any case, you are almost certain that that's just life, that even your father had been faking his confidence some of the time.

You are still not sure just whose man you are. Partially your father's, despite everything, and partially your mother's--partially Adán's and partially Saito's, partially the people's and partially your own. You are not sure any man belongs solely to himself, and you don't know that you'd want to. What you do know is who you're not, who you will never be.

It isn't much, but it's enough.


End file.
